OtherGroups-Titanians
Posted by: Tara Yu, Firewall Crow, Titan Autonomous University On Titan, we like our government agencies tidy. Tidily transparent, tidily organized, tidily correct. Nothing vexes the Titanian mind more than the suspicion that somewhere, someone in government is doing something that one didn’t get to vote on. And yet, in a society where virtually everyone serves in the military at some point, there’s also the recognition that secrets have their uses. The space between the Plurality’s appetite for accountability and its need to champion our socioeconomic system leaves a dark space—a spook world where exigencies trump idealism. We’ve invited monsters to dwell in that world, reassuring ourselves that they’re our monsters. For now, at least, the monsters are playing along. But the fact remains: the Titanian government is the most benevolent state-level entity in transhuman space—until you cross its security services, at which point it is pure evil. Organization Taking a page from our anarchist neighbors, and following our own mania for egalitarianism, Titanianagencies tend toward ﬂat organizations. Hierarchy exists, but every attempt is made to minimize managerial positions by using AI agents to coordinate work and compile reports to the agency head. Every agency has an AI engineering department that spends its time ﬁne-tuning the expert systems managing everyone’s work. In an emergency, each AI has a human backup designated to temporarily take over management. The exceptions to the above are Fleet and the Civilian Intelligence Directorate, where a more traditional command structure is still the order of the day. A system of checks and balances exists between these two agencies, however, starting with their reporting to two different ministries in government. Transparency Access to secret information is a thorny problem in a parliamentary cyberdemocracy. It used to be that such information, if it had to leave security agencies, was at least concentrated in the hands of political elites who had a great deal to lose if they failed to handle it carefully. But the nature of elections in the Plurality means that new ministers can come out of nowhere. Thanks to the inﬂuence of factions like the Pirat party, Titan has no overarching state secrets laws. To counterbalance this, CID and Fleet Intelligence devised a unique system of delivering intelligence brieﬁngs. Orchestra and Attachés CID and Fleet jointly maintain a corps of AI intelligence consultants called attachés. Their function is to advise their clients—ministers, ministerial staff, and occasionally special commissions of the Plurality—on intelligence matters. Attachés are expert systems that connect to the Orchestra, a system of predictive algorithms married with a sprawling intel database. They observe the conversations, internal deliberations, and ofﬁcial communications of their client. If the subject matter warrants, they will offer secret information, based on their analysis of the situation. The attaché’s access to the Orchestra is bolstered with kinesics software, learned knowledge of their client, and skillsofts loaded with subject matter knowledge (which, being skillsofts, also reﬂect the vaporous opinions of the person whose skills are being duplicated). Attachés may respond to questions from their client, but more often, they stay silent and offer information only when the Orchestra deems the situation to warrant it. Attachés are sleeved into small bots, synths, ghostrider modules, or sometimes biomorphs with cyberbrains. They may be identiﬁed by a single thick, blue stripe running from forehead to jaw over the right eye. For synths and bots, an analogous marking is part of the construction or is painted over the “face.” CID assigns them to the staffs of ministers, and they’re a regular sight in Titanian diplomatic delegations. They almost never speak when anyone other than their clients are present, providing information via encrypted mesh communications. The Orchestra is a highly controversial program. At its best, it arms Titanian ofﬁcials with just-in-time intel to strengthen their decision making and negotiations. It keeps that intel secret until it’s needed, partly solving the problem of a rotating cast of ministers having access to state secrets. Nevertheless, some in the Plurality want further reassurances. Who really controls the Orchestra? Who decides what its predictive algorithms decide that the attachés should dole out? Does it give too much power to CID? So far, the Orchestra hasn’t been a source of scandal for CID and Fleet, but the topic remains a hot point of debate. Plurality members with A-Bloc or Pirat sympathies regularly propose legislation or special commissions to curtail the Orchestra, but so far, the Social Democrat center hasn’t been moved by their arguments. Sidebar: Question of Protocol Testimony of Theodore Lindquist, Secretary to the Vice-Minister of Trade, to the Plurality’s Special Commission of Fact-Finding on “In-Context” Intelligence Brieﬁngs Lindquist: I was at a meeting—at our embassy on the Bund—on 12 June, AF 9, between Case Hayes, a representative of the Fa Jing mining concern, and Vice-Minister of Trade Marcelle Wong. Commissioner 1: You mean the Commonwealth’s embassy on Mars, at Valles-NewShanghai? Lindquist: That’s correct. The purpose of the meeting was to warn off Fa Jing from “claiming” metal-rich asteroids it had no near-term ability to mine. Commissioner 2: And the Vice-Minister was accompanied by her attaché? Lindquist: Yes. The negotiations were proceeding poorly, and— Commissioner 1: That’s very subjective. Could you please clarify what you mean by “poorly?” Lindquist: Of course. The Fa Jing rep wasn’t giving a centimeter. When the Vice-Minister emphasized that Titan didn’t recognize Fa Jing’s claims, he replied that “acts of piracy” might draw a response from Fa Jing military assets in the disputed volume. That was when the attaché sent a burst of documents to our side of the table. Commissioner 3: In mid-sentence, as it were? How did the Vice-Minister recover? Lindquist: With aplomb, in my subjective opinion. Or, if you like, our own kinesics software barely registered her reaction. One couldn’t say whether the Fa Jing rep did. Commissioner 1: What happened then? Lindquist: The Vice-Minister paused as if she needed to confer with myself and Ms. Eriksen, the representative from Off-world Metals Microcorp, but in fact she was skimming the documents provided by the attaché. Then she called Mr. Hayes’s bluff. The killsats Fa Jing was threatening to activate were obsolete, barely a threat to one of our mining ﬂeets, let alone those escorted by one of Fleet’s corvettes. CID had known for years. Commissioner 2: One assumes this turned the negotiations around? Lindquist: Mr. Hayes promised to lodge a complaint with the Consortium regarding “Titanian expansionism,” then retired. We had won the day, but then the Vice-Minister turned on the attaché. Commissioner 1: Can you describe that interaction? Lindquist: I can quote from my own recordings: * The Vice-Minister asked, “Attaché, why did you withhold this information previously?” * The Attaché replied, “‘Withhold’ is not a concept understood by the Orchestra, Madam Vice-Minister. The Orchestra provides information as context warrants.” * “‘Context’ in this case should have warranted arming me with that information in advance of the meeting, attaché!” * “The Orchestra allowed for the probability that you could prevail upon Mr. Hayes without revealing CID’s knowledge of their defenses.” * “‘Probability’ in whose judgment?” * “We employ predictive algorithms, Madam Vice-Minister; we don’t possess ‘judgment.’” * “Then whose judgment is it?” Commissioner 2: What was its answer? Lindquist: It gave none. Zeroed Briefings Another method occasionally used for balancing security with transparency is the zero retention brieﬁng. Using this method, ministers or commissioners are administered a drug that prevents memory formation and are barred from using mnemonic augmentation or other recording methods. A third party monitors the meeting to ensure no tampering by either side, beyond ensuring the party being briefed remembers nothing. The minister or commissioners have enough time to absorb the brieﬁng, make deliberations, and vote on further measures. They’re then kept in isolation until the drug takes effect. The Plurality has its voice heard, but secrets remain secret. However, there are a number of special rules governing this meeting, including the possibility for the party being briefed to vote for wider disclosure of the information being discussed. If more than one session is required, the third party in charge of meeting security keeps an encrypted copy of the minutes which the participants can study at the beginning of the next meeting. Operational Memory Hacks At least it can be said that the intelligence community eats its own dog food. Memory suppression or later memory editing are used on operatives as well. For operatives who see something they shouldn’t, a trip to Fleet Intel’s Ofﬁce of Wellness may be in order. For agents operating in the ﬁeld as beta forks, memory pruning before re-merging isn’t uncommon. Whether some forks are simply deleted is an open question. But when it’s known ahead of time that operatives will encounter things for which they’re not cleared, they may be implanted with an involuntarily controlled narcoalgorithm or drug gland that administers doses of the long-term memory suppressor known as grey ranks. This drug can prevent memory formation for over a week—albeit with some side effects. Sidebar: 'Transparency' and Existential Threats You’ll be shocked, of course, to hear that briefings and missions involving the TITANs and exsurgent activity are frequent-use cases for various memory hacks. It’s tempting to blame Fleet for this zeal in keeping secrets, but the Ministries of State and Justice and Equality are quietly supportive of the policy. Of the ministries discussed here, only the Pirat-controlled Science Ministry stands in opposition. The "Titanian Schism" I once consulted with the Titanian Civilian Intelligence Directorate. Now I’m a proxy. The explanation isn’t one you’re cleared for yet, but its effects are referred to as the “Titanian Schism.” During the Fall, Titanian academics and allies from Kronosian space formed Survival Research Agenda. It was a think-tank devoted to analyzing the enemy, probing for weaknesses, securing Kronosian space, and exploring lifeboat strategies should the inner system fall. The Agenda was non-governmental but formed a consulting relationship with CID. But the Agenda, not beholden to the government, also consulted with the argonauts, proto-Firewall operators, and even sometimes inner system polities. There’s long been talk of turning Firewall into an above-board organization. In the early months post-Fall, Commonwealth territory was considered as a base of operations. The Commonwealth government was democratic, it could offer military protection within its own territory, and Survival Research Agenda members formed a significant bloc among Firewall’s founders. Ironically, it was this last group that ended talk of going overt under Titanian protection. What happened is known only to members of the Agenda, and to those in the proxy community with a need to know. The effects were plain. The Agenda’s membership split almost down the middle. Some threw in their lot with CID or Fleet Intelligence, while others cut their ties to the Titanian intel community and embraced Firewall instead. It’s arguable which organization was hurt more. Firewall lost access to Titanian resources and protection, CID and Fleet lost a potential alliance to an organization with huge off-world HUMINT-gathering capabilities, and both lost brainpower. Relations are cordial as long as neither organization pushes the other too far. At least as regards the TITANs, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the prevailing stance. Both sides have moles, but none in positions of power, as both Firewall and CID/Fleet’s screening processes are aggressive in winnowing out double agents. Tit-for-tat exchanges of information aren’t unknown, although neither side will fail to press its advantage if contact occurs where it has the upper hand. For Titanian Firewall agents, though, the question of divided loyalties comes up regularly—not least of all because both sides are always looking for new moles. Threat Awareness Having seen action during the Fall, and having collaborated to some extent with the argonauts and other elements that would go on to be part of Firewall, the Commonwealth’s intel services are well briefed on exsurgent threats. It’s public knowledge on Titan that transhumanity’s antagonists during the Fall (leaving aside human inﬁghting) were machine intelligences armed with killer robots, nanoswarms, and the ability to corrupt or mutate biological lifeforms and machines alike. It’s also well known that the machines were up to something beneath the surface of Iapetus, and that Fleet bombed the moon in response. One thing the Titanian intelligence community hasn’t done is to silo knowledge about the TITANs and exsurgents. No agency has a “TITAN Ofﬁce” with specific authority over cases involving the TITANs or the exsurgent virus. The average Titanian operative potentially has much greater access to information than their counterparts elsewhere, provided they have a need-to-know and aren’t shy about requesting it. Sidebar: Awareness Level Things that are not public knowledge, but are known to high-ranking intel ofﬁcers and any agent with a need-to-know: * The TITANs’ primary weapon, the exsurgent virus, is highly transmissible and can rapidly corrupt both machines and biological life. * Beyond planetary intelligence services like Oversight and the Jovian CID, there are two organizations specializing in gathering intel on the TITANs and the virus. One, Project Ozma, is a black-budget project of the Planetary Consortium. The other, Firewall, is a secretive anarchist affinity group operating as a loose network rather than a uniﬁed organization. * The TITANs were building a planet-scale supercomputer beneath Iapetus. Exsurgent-infected colonists served as drone labor. * Many former CID consultants from during the Fall now work for Firewall. Others might have gone over to OZMA.Relative to Firewall, the Commonwealth’s stance on other possible existential threats breaks down roughly thus: * Exhumans are understood as extreme augmentation cases or singularity seekers. Given that CID and Fleet Intel practice extreme augmentation virtually as a condition of employment, the Commonwealth doesn’t recognize exhumans as inherently threatening unless they behave as such. * The Factors deal secretly with the Science Ministry and CID’s Ofﬁce of Science and Technology on a fairly regular basis. Fleet has quietly pursued the location of the Factor’s base in transhuman space for years, but they’ve done so very cautiously and under false ﬂags for fear of upsetting the apple cart that is trade in alien technology. * The ultimates are deemed a major ideological rival and potentially a serious threat to Titanian security. The Commonwealth has watched their involvement with the Discord Gate affair and the seizure of authority on Kronos with particular unease. The gates at Pandora and Oberon are the focal points of a cold war that will certainly run hot if the ultimates make their move. Ministry of State: Civilian Intelligence Directorate (CID) Minister: Claudine Trudeau (Socialist) Agency Head: Director Riika Järveläinen CID is the civilian analysis wing of the Titanian off-world intelligence services. Reporting to the Minister of State, CID’s functions include signals intelligence, mesh monitoring, analyzing surveillance data, and monitoring deep-space trafﬁc for possible threats to Titan. History CID’s history is entwined with that of Fleet Intelligence. Both came into being about 30 years before the Fall. The young Titanian state emerged during a time when the outer system was, to some minds, up for grabs. Autonomists were staking their claims on various moons and rocks, and just as often, governments and hypercorps sought to take control over them. The lines between settlers, merchants, and pirates were very ﬁne in those days, and often crossed. CID began as a deep-space tracking and listening outﬁt, charged with monitoring radio trafﬁc, ship telemetry, and exhaust ﬂares. CID analysts scrutinized ships’ communications, trajectories, and physical characteristics from sensor posts seeded all over the system. If a ship headed toward Titan or one of its outposts looked like a potential threat, CID issued early warnings to Fleet and Plurality. CID still performs this work today, but its portfolio has expanded. Organization CID is divided into several ofﬁces whose AI managers report to the agency’s head, Riika Järveläinen, a former ofﬁcer of the Swedish UNDK. CID has no ﬁeld operations arm. Ops and human intelligence are strictly the province of Fleet Intelligence. Physical security of CID facilities is handled either by the Security Police, or, for the highest security areas, by Fleet. CID includes the following ofﬁces. Asset Monitoring: Asset Monitoring keeps tabs on current and potential human intelligence assets. It works with Memetic Warfare and Fleet’s Ofﬁce of Human Intelligence to identify and recruit informants and operatives from other polities. It also analyzes intercepted messages from the Mesh and Signals Intelligence Ofﬁce for threats to undercover human assets. Asset Monitoring never has direct contact with assets; this falls to Fleet. Forecasting: The Ofﬁce of Forecasting runs predictive simulations on everything from the likely path of asteroids in the Lagrangian Transport Network to the planetary economy of Mars. Employing massive computing power and no small number of AGIs, Forecasting also supplies combat- and defense-related simulations data to Fleet for both training and planning purposes. And then there’s the GALDRABOK program, a collaboration between Forecasting and R&D known to employ asyncs—reputedly with precognitive abilities. Memetic Warfare: This ofﬁce monitors memes and trending topics in news and reputation networks. Analysts seek to identify memes that are threatening to the Commonwealth, as well as those that might be leveraged to its beneﬁt. On paper, Memetic Warfare liaises regularly with its counterpart ofﬁce in the Security Police, but in fact the relationship is a rocky one due to personality clashes between their managers. Mesh and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT): This ofﬁce eavesdrops on the corporate, diplomatic, and governmental communications of hostile polities. The Ministry of Justice and Equality has the power to appoint special attachés to monitor MSI’s choice of surveillance targets (though not the content of the intelligence gathered). Usually there is at least one such attaché active at any time, reporting directly to the Minister of Justice. Research and Development: The engineering wing of CID spends most of its time developing new software, new ﬁeld gear for Fleet’s operatives, and new SIGINT technology for deployment into the deep-space surveillance networks maintained by Fleet. R&D has also done research into the async phenomenon, and a debate is ongoing about whether to go public regarding the existence of psychics. Doing so might enable Titan to be the ﬁrst polity to create an organized corps of async agents, but so far, caution due to the mysterious origins of Watts-MacLeod has carried the day. Science and Technology: S&T analyzes scientiﬁc and technological developments elsewhere in the system. This ofﬁce is of special interest to Firewall because of its research into TITANs, exsurgents, exhumans, and black-budget hypercorp projects. S&T’s Predictive Modeling Unit runs simulations of everything from inner system economies to potential space battles. Rumors that they have a large amount of hardware capable of hosting seed AIs are most likely true. Space Trafﬁc: This ofﬁce fulﬁlls CID’s original role of monitoring deep-space traffic for objects potentially threatening to Titan, its holdings in the Belt, and its outposts elsewhere in Kronosian space. It also monitors potential threats to Titan’s allies, such as Locus. CID’s network of listening posts spans the solar system and several others where Titan or Titanian microcorps have exoplanet outposts. Updates from other systems come through asynchronously when gates open and data ﬂows through from beyond. The actual listening posts are placed and maintained by Fleet. People Riika Järveläinen, the chief of CID, has served through several administrations under both Socialist and Social Democrat Ministers of State. Somewhat unusually, she started out in the Ofﬁce of Science and Technology. Most of CID’s previous chiefs came from the SIGINT or Space Trafﬁc ofﬁces. The current manager of the Science and Technology office is Domnall Uí Ceinnselaig, a protégé of Järveläinen, whose theories put him at the center of the Titanian Schism. Both he and his counterpart in R&D, Svea Liefsdottir, are rumored variously to be either asyncs or borderline-exhuman singularity seekers. Aileen Torsdottir, the current manager of Asset Monitoring, is notable for her efforts to monitor Firewall assets. It would seem her counterparts in Fleet’s HUMINT branch are eager for more double agents. Places CID’s main headquarters is in a wing of the Ministry of State building in Nyhavn. They also have major command centers aboard Skathi, Phoebe, and Abramsen, the fortiﬁed moonlets that are part of Titan’s orbital defenses. Relations with Firewall CID is at the center of the “Titanian Schism.” While there’s some recognition that Firewall and CID are on the same side, sentinels should be as cautious in dealing with CID as they would with any other intelligence agency. Sidebar: Posthumans in the fold? CID and Fleet Intelligence have a reputation for recruiting top talent and then pushing it to its limits. For some, the rewards in rep and Kroner are a draw; for others, the opportunity to work with the minds these agencies have brought together and the bleeding-edge knowledge they employ is reason enough. In either case, being heavily augmented and willing to push the envelope even further is a prerequisite for getting hired. Heavy use of forking—beyond what would be considered socially appropriate outside the spook world—is de rigeur. Analysts with multiple personalities are not uncommon and having multiple ghostrider modules installed even less so. Asyncs are especially prized as recruits. Fleet’s field operatives are also heavily augmented, sleeved in cutting-edge morphs with ﬁne-tuned combat performance, sensory augmentation, or social advantages as appropriate to their roles. Where a permanent augmentation isn’t called for, drugs are just as often used. In this culture, the bounds of transhuman identity and social behavior are stretched thin. A CID analyst or a ﬂeet ﬁeld operative is called upon to take every performance advantage they can—social niceties about how forking, augmentations, and the like are used be damned. Fleet Intelligence’s Ofﬁce of Wellness keeps very busy dealing with agents whose stress levels have run too high. Plurality commissions of inquiry have leveled the charge that these agencies are ﬂirting with a policy that approaches the ultimates’ or even the exhumans’ obsessions with performance enhancement. The leading lights in CID and Fleet, who are themselves heavily augmented, counter that Titan’s intelligence community must pursue this course to keep up with other polities. Sidebar: The Sixth Eye Sweden was once termed “The Sixth Eye.” Thanks to its advantageous position for spying on the Russians, Sweden was chosen as the Scandinavian member of the “Five Eyes” SIGINT alliance between the old United States, the UK, and several British Commonwealth countries. Although the alliance that earned it the appellation ended before the Fall, it gave Sweden a massive head start in SIGINT and info-warfare capability compared to its European neighbors. The NAC-backed space colonies and the Titanian Commonwealth later inherited much of this capacity. The SIGINT ofﬁces of Titan’s intel services remain home to an old guard virtually unreformed in outlook from the Russo-Atlantic Second Cold War. Once servants of the Swedish Crown, never fully comfortable in their later allegiance to the NAC, and now oft alienated amid the newness of Titan, the old guard are varied in their politics and don’t constitute a uniﬁed group. Because they possess the preternatural expertise of the hyper-aged, however, they often wield great inﬂuence. To mistake them for relics is foolish. The spook world is now the only one they truly know, and they’re its elder ghosts. Ministry of Defense: Commonwealth Fleet Intelligence (CFI) Minister: Jens Møller (Social Democrat) Agency Head: Sky Marshal Rorik Sigurdsen Fleet Intelligence is Titan’s principal off-world intelligence agency and, as such, the one with which sentinels are most likely to come in contact. CFI is responsible for surveillance of other polities’ military assets (both during and out of battle), human intelligence gathering, and maintaining the physical hardware for CID’s signals intelligence programs. CFI and CID are heavily dependent upon one another, but there is some friction between the groups. This is in part because they report to different ministers in government, and in part because one is civilian while the other is military, but most importantly stems from who has more authority. CID provides all of the analysis, but Fleet, with direction from the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, actually calls all of the shots as far as how the intelligence is used. History CFI has existed for as long as Fleet itself, having been formed during the early days of Titan’s independence. The relationship with CID also dates to these times. Space battles are extremely deadly, tending to leave few or no survivors on the losing side, so the Commonwealth made the decision early on to keep skilled analysts off of ships. The buildup of a human-intelligence and ﬁelds-ops organization is more recent, beginning in the turbulent decade prior to the Fall and continuing up to the present. Organization As part of Fleet, all CFI operatives have a military rank. Fleet Intelligence is broken up into the following units: Battlespace Surveillance: This office is organized into battlespace surveillance ﬂotillas attached to ﬂeets. Each has the responsibility for being the eyes and ears of a given ﬂeet or ﬂeet element. Electronic and Nano Warfare: This ofﬁce trains bug hunters. Sometimes, they’re embedded in marine squads or with ﬁeld agent teams. Heavily augmented for their task, E&NW operatives are virtually walking electronic warfare suites, prepared to counter any invisible threat their team encounters. Human Intelligence Gathering (HUMINT): HUMINT forms the bulk of CFI’s ﬁeld operatives. Gathering ofﬁcers contact human-intelligence assets, perform up-close reconnaissance, undertake black-ops missions, and undertake any other tasks requiring an agent on the ground. HUMINT makes heavy use of blanks—psychosurgically modiﬁed forks of ﬁeld operatives whose memories have been drastically edited to guard sensitive intel. Blanks retain their competencies, but have virtually no knowledge of their personal identities. In a similar vein, CFI sleeper agents are the ultimate in deep-cover moles. Psychosurgery is used to give them almost completely new identities, with deep triggers capable of reactivating them as operatives. For some missions, HUMINT also employs vættir (English: wights), advanced AIs bordering on sapient sleeved into synths or sometimes biomorphs. A vættr has the skills (or is loaded with skillsofts) needed to fulﬁll a given ops role, while lacking any personal identity or memories that could compromise operational security if it were captured. HUMINT handles psychosurgical interrogations of captured enemy assets. Torture—at least as deﬁned by the Plurality’s numerous commissions of inquiry—is not used. HUMINT has far more effective and subtle tools in its arsenal. Time dilation and a featureless gray room work on almost anyone given enough processing power. Finally, Fleet’s mission commanders, especially those used in combat roles, are often so heavily modified both physically and mentally that they border on exhuman in their outlooks. A few are even known to be “reformed” exhumans, retained by Fleet for the extreme and ruthless practicality they may exert in a leadership role. If a given job needs an amoral sociopath driving it to completion, CFI has a list of candidates ready to go. Navigation and Telemetry: This ofﬁce deploys and maintains the hardware for Fleet’s private mesh of deep-space monitoring stations. This includes both physical maintenance of satellites and IT maintenance of their software. Development of new software for devices in the network is done by CID’s Ofﬁce of Space Trafﬁc. The hardware maintained ranges in size from can-sized repeaters to the room-sized encryption and comm suites on a Fleet destroyer, up to the massive arrays of directional antennas in Kronosian space that collect signals from all over the system. Wellness: Wellness monitors and cares for the mental and physical health of CID and CFI agents. One of transhumanity’s premiere psychosurgical care units, Wellness can bring damaged minds back from the depths of insanity—or rewrite a person’s identity so thoroughly that they could never be spotted as an agent until activated. People Sky Marshal Rorik Sigurdsen is the commanding officer of Fleet Intelligence. While technically outranked by Sky Marshal Iversen, the chair of Fleet’s General Staff, Sigurdsen reports directly to the Minister of Defense, currently Jens Møller of the Social Democrat party. Sigurdsen came to his post in BF 5, and thus reaped a lot of credit for the agency’s success in detecting and averting TITAN threats early in the Fall. Sigurdsen is a strong proponent of CID and CFI’s internal culture of encouraging heavy augmentation among agents. His agency’s successes during the Fall have fended off many questions about whether this is a good thing, but a decade later, the questioners are growing more bold. For his part, Møller has been keeping Sigurdsen on a tight leash. Doctor Francoise Vieillard (nominal rank of Wing Commander) directs the Ofﬁce of Wellness and its subordinate Psychosurgery Brigades. Vieillard, herself an MPD case with no fewer than 10 sub-personae, personally oversees preparation of blanks and vættir for some missions. Places Fleet has its own facilities aboard Phoebe, Skathi, and Abramsen, the three captured moonlets forming part of Titan’s orbital defenses. The most prestigious off-world posting for agents is Valles Station, Fleet Intel’s station in the Titanian Embassy on Mars. Their headquarters is in the Ministry of Defense building in Nyhavn. Relations with Firewall If CFI assets with knowledge of Firewall make overtures to a Firewall team, the sentinels should consult with a proxy before making any reply. To date, Fleet has yet to outright interrogate anyone suspected to be a Firewall member. They have on occasion detained and debriefed sentinels, though their handling of them has been considerably softer than what a spy from a foreign polity could expect. This could change, and if it does, “deny everything” is the best policy. For our part, Titanian proxies are very careful in assigning missions that coincide with Fleet’s sphere of inﬂuence. Sentinels going to places like Iapetus need to be extremely cautious in keeping their covers. Ministry of Justice and Equality: Security Police Minister: Nadifa Samakab Geeddi (Socialist) Agency Head: Director Håkon Aagaard The Security Police are Titan’s domestic intelligence service, charged with securing Titanian interests within Titanian territory—be it on-world or in outposts Titan considers part of its territory. The exceptions are military outposts, which fall under Fleet’s jurisdiction. History The Security Police also predate the Fall. Their original mission was maintaining security at Titan’s off-world mining outposts. Later, SP’s portfolio expanded to include domestic counterintelligence, the need for which emerged during the stormy years leading up to the Fall. The Security Police have a somewhat tarnished reputation, being widely blamed for security failures leading to the apparent sabotage of the Scoop, a Titanian megaproject to extract helium directly from Saturn’s atmosphere into orbit. SP’s jurisdiction sometimes overlaps with that of the Science Police. This creates strain at present because the Justice and Equality ministry under Geeddi and the Science Ministry under Pedro Transﬁnity don’t get along famously. Worse is their relationship with Fleet Intel. Since the Scoop ﬁasco, there have been several inquiries into whether CFI has inﬁltrated the Security Police. Fleet denies it, but Director Aagaard continues to lodge ofﬁcial protests. Organization The Security Police are a civilian organization. Operations of the Security Police are divided among the following ofﬁces: Counterintelligence: Cointel is the largest branch and runs domestic counter-espionage. Most field agents are part of this ofﬁce. Agents include uniformed security details, plainclothes agents for VIP protection and investigative ﬁeldwork, and paramilitary tactical squads. Some very high-value targets are monitored or physically protected by Cointel, including ministry buildings that lack their own security forces, the reﬁneries at Marseilles on Prometheus (reputed to include Titan’s main antimatter production facility), and (allegedly) the gate on Pandora. Countermemetics: Countermemetics investigates and attempts to counter psy ops against the Titanian populace. Socialist sympathies among its personnel run so hot that it’s on occasion gone so far as to classify certain types of advertising as psychological warfare. Robotic Ops: Robotic Ops handles bot and counterbot ops. They run and maintain the SP’s notorious wobblycats—stealthy, extremely fast, cat-sized bots that can be loaded with surveillance gear or, much more rarely, munitions. Special Debrieﬁngs: Using similar techniques to Fleet’s HUMINT branch, this ofﬁce handles psychosurgical interrogations. Under Titanian law, using psychosurgery, simulspace time dilation, and similar techniques in normal, civil, or criminal cases is illegal. However, they can be used on both Commonwealth citizens and off-worlders in cases of terrorism, espionage, treason, or memetic warfare. People Director Håkon Aagaard is a career ﬁeld agent who made a name for himself busting up a major kroner-laundering scheme by the Kron Kartelyeı˘ and the Lunar banks. Aagaard’s success brought down several prominent New Quebec politicos. He was just the white knight the Security Police needed after the Scoop debacle and was quickly tapped to replace the previous director, who resigned in disgrace. Delandre Boucaut is the Deputy Director for Countermemetics, a socialist stalwart with rumored ties to the Technosocialist Interplanetary. He’s remarkable for having been poached from CFI’s Memetic Warfare division, bringing several key analysts with him. This hiring may have been Aagaard hitting back subtly at CFI and Fleet for their alleged inﬁltration of SP. Whether it proves worth the dust it stirred up remains to be seen. Senior Agent Becky Transﬁnity is a codeline relative of Pedro Transfinity who heads Cointel’s infosec division. What Becky’s more famous relative thinks of one of their codeline working for SP is not known. Places In addition to their headquarters at Nyhavn’s Ministry of Justice, the Security Police have stations at the Vakker Ordnance Works shipyards, at Marseilles on Prometheus, and on Pandora near the gate. They have personnel stationed at many non-military Titanian outposts, including exoplanet colonies. They do not, however, guard Titan’s embassies. This is the function of the Commonwealth Marines. Relations with Firewall Rank-and-ﬁle SP agents have considerably less access to information about Firewall than their counterparts in CFI and Fleet. Some senior agents and everyone of deputy director rank or higher, however, do know we exist. As far as SP is concerned, we’re a nongovernmental anarchist group involved in anti-WMD activism. Despite their counterintelligence function, the Security Police have standing orders from the Prime Minister’s ofﬁce to hand Firewall agents over to Fleet for debrieﬁng. The SP doesn’t like this much, though, and under Aagaard’s direction, it seems like only a matter of time until they exceed their authority and attempt a real interrogation of a sentinel. Other Justice and Equality Police Agencies Several other police agencies, with their own agency heads independent of the SP, operate under the aegis of the Justice and Equality ministry. The ofﬁces of these agencies with which sentinels are most likely to interact include the following: * Commonwealth Police, Ofﬁce of Investigations, handles physical and mesh-based criminal investigations planet-wide. * Judicial Police, Ofﬁce of Judicial Protection, is Titan’s protective custody service. For infomorphs, this protection may go as far as a temporary stay in an ofﬁcer’s ghost rider module. Ministry of Science: Science Police Minister: Pedro Transﬁnity (Pirat) Agency Head: Commissioner Astrid Lumière The Science Police are charged with securing state-funded research facilities, investigating any wrongdoing that occurs there, investigating other matters pertaining to the scientiﬁc community, enforcing the Commonwealth’s laws regarding sharing of microcorp research, and screening items brought back from exoplanets for safety. The Science Police are the sole civil police authority in a number of places that aren’t Titanian territory proper but are under Ministry of Science purview, such as the warrens beneath Iapetus, state-sponsored exoplanet research stations, and aboard the ICS-201 Crystal Wind. History Titan is the undisputed scientiﬁc research powerhouse of the solar system. With possession of a Pandora gate, massive energy reserves, a legal system that requires microcorps to share their research, and a population who think it’s cool to pour their surplus wealth into science and technology, how could it not be? However, as anyone who’s spent time around scientists knows, they’re not always the best behaved lot. This, combined with the keen interest of other polities in disrupting or getting a jump on Titanian research, lead to the formation in AF 3 of a police force answerable to the Minister of Science. The Science Police and the Security Police have never gotten on well. The newly formed Science Police (acronymized “MSP” to avoid confusion with the Security Police) warned of infosec vulnerabilities in the Scoop project months before the disaster that ended it—warnings that fell on deaf ears in the Justice and Equality ministry. At almost the same time, MSP had its ﬁrst major victory: Chief Inspector Astrid Lumière, now commissioner of the department, exposed a ring who’d been selling still-secret microcorp research to inner system hypercorps. The Science Police and their charismatic head became media darlings, a position they’re still riding high on. Organization The Science Police are a civilian organization structured similarly to a regular police department. Each area of specialty is termed a district, each headed by a chief reporting to the commissioner. Exocustoms: This district’s primary operations are on Pandora, although they also have the power to inspect materials of exoplanetary origin entering Titanian territory from other gates. Exocustoms uses electronic scanning, biodetection, chemical snifﬁng, and a battery of other techniques to detect items that could pose a hazard. For items that are known to be dangerous, they inspect containment equipment and administer the permits needed to bring them through. Exoplanets that regularly export items to Pandora may have a permanent Exocustoms station on the exoplanet side of the gate. Investigations: The Investigations District is the smallest section of MSP. Inspectors from this district investigate crimes occurring on or related to state research sites. They may also consult with the regular Commonwealth Police when the matter pertains to the science or technology communities. Cases regarding research authorship, falsiﬁcation of results, malfeasance, neglect, and research ethics all concern this district. Where MSP is the civil police authority, this portfolio expands to include other criminal matters such as homicide. Security: This district is the Science Police’s principal uniformed service. Security District has stations or personnel at planetside state research facilities, at the Large Collider, at research stations beneath Iapetus, and at Marseilles on Prometheus, among other places. The security station aboard the colony ship Crystal Wind is nicknamed “the Barnard’s Star Police District,” although it will be some centuries before it lives up to the appellation. Transparency: Originally part of the Investigations District until its task space grew too large, the Transparency District has the difﬁcult job of enforcing compliance with the Plurality’s transparency laws—speciﬁcally those pertaining to scientiﬁc and technological research. Under Titanian law, research enters the public domain once the microcorp that produced it recoups its initial investment. It’s transhuman nature to hold on to a competitive advantage, though, making enforcement of these regulations one of the hottest topics in microcorp law. The Transparency District, far and away the least glamorous of postings in the Science Police, is thus its largest division. People Astrid Lumière, Commissioner of the Ministry of Science Police, leads the agency. Lumière’s success as a Chief Inspector in the District of Investigations catapulted her to a promotion as agency chief—and launched the political career of her former boss, Natalya Iversen, recently elected as Minister of Information under the Social Democrat banner. A rare mixture of investigative skills and charisma, Lumière is immensely popular with the rank-and-ﬁle. A recent surprise appearance in a tan trenchcoat to perform the classical song “Never Gonna Give You Up” aboard the Crystal Wind has only enhanced her media standing. Places The Science Police headquarters are a small building at the Ministry of Science research park in Aarhus. They have stations or personnel beneath Iapetus, at major Titanian research stations, and aboard the Crystal Wind. Relations with Firewall The Science Police aren’t aware of Firewall. Several sentinels serve in MSP, their actions on our behalf so far clandestine. Given that MSP currently reports to a Pirat Party minister, a witch hunt for moles seems unlikely. Sentinels should still be cautious, however, as MSP’s jurisdictions frequently overlap with the other security services, which are aware of us.